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Month: June 2013

Rwanda’s government is to build high-speed 4G internet, to cover entire country with partnership of South Korea’s KT Corporation, within three years. KT Corp will spend about $140 million in the LTE broadband joint venture network, which will cover 95% of the country. Today only 8% of the country has internet access although 1,865 miles (3,000km) of fiber optic cable(s) have laid since ’09. A 95% rate of broadband penetration can possibly add 10%-13% to the country’s GDP.

Youth and ICT minister Jean Philbert Nsengimana, said: “This agreement with KT marks a major milestone in Rwanda’s drive to become a modern, knowledge-based economy – and by expanding our information infrastructure, we will create jobs, support social progress and propel economic growth.”

Chief executive of the Rwanda Development Board Clare Akamanzi,, added: “Rwanda’s citizens and businesses must have access to the tools that will enable them to seize the opportunities of the digital age – and none is more important than fast, reliable and accessible broadband. “We are pleased to partner with KT in this unique initiative to make available high-speed broadband to all Rwandans.”.

This is welcome news, especially as a user of the internet, who has recently visited Rwanda where the internet speeds need improvement (According to Internet World Stats, Africa still has the world’s lowest internet penetration rate at 15.6%). President Paul Kagame is clearly moving the country in the right direction when it comes to technology and the importance that it brings to economic development. Although up to a dozen countries in Africa operate 4G networks, Rwanda’s 4G network will be the first that is truly built from the ground up with help from one of the world leaders in internet connectivity, South Korea.

Rwanda has come a long way since the unfortunate genocide events of ’94. From economic, political, and social, the country is doing well but not as well when it comes to public health. 98% of Rwandans have access to low cost insurance, and the country provides free preventive care (mosquito nets,immunizations ). Famous public health doctor Paul Farmer writes in the British Medical Journal about the country’s accomplishments the New York Times reports:

“In the less than two decades since the 1994 genocidethat killed nearly a million Rwandans and displaced another two million, the country has become a spectacular public health success story and could provide a model for the rest of Africa, according to a new analysis by American health experts.

In an article published last month by the British journal BMJ, Dr. Paul E. Farmer, a founder of Partners in Health, which delivers medical services in Rwandaand Haiti, totaled up the successes the tiny country has managed. In 1994, 78 percent of the population lived below the poverty line; now 45 percent do. The gross domestic product has more than trebled. Almost 99 percent of primary-school-age children go to school.

With help from Western donors, the number of people getting treatment for AIDSrose to 108,000 from near zero a decade earlier.

Many doctors fled Rwanda before the genocide, and many were killed. Even now, the country has only about 625 doctors in public hospitals for a population of almost 11 million. But it also has more than 8,000 nurses, and a new corps of 45,000 health care workers, elected by their own villages, to do primary care for malaria, pneumonia,diarrhea, family planning, prenatal care and childhood shots.

Largely because of these workers, the country has high rates of success in curing tuberculosis and keeping people with AIDS on antiretroviral drugs.

Nearly 98 percent of all Rwandans have health insurance. Annual premiums are small and subsidized by donors, and subscribers pay 10 percent co-pays. But many aspects of preventive care, like mosquito nets and immunizations, are free. The country has a national system of computerized medical records and uses cellphone text messaging to get reports from village health workers.

Since 2000, the maternal mortality ratio has fallen by 60%; the likelihood that a child would die by age 5 has dropped by 70%.

“If these gains can be sustained,” Dr. Farmer wrote, “Rwanda will be the only country in the region on track to meet each of the health-related Millennium Development Goals by 2015.”

There’s debate about whether Rwanda’s success is due to foreign aid or government competency with its decisions. What ever reason is the case, what Rwanda has done needs to be studied by fellow African nations, regardless.